The Auslander by Paul Dowswell

Author:Paul Dowswell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Published: 2009-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

.

CHAPTER 20

January 16, 1943

.

When Peter first arrived in Berlin, the Kaltenbach girls had told him excitedly of the air raids they had witnessed. ‘Feeble little bombers. Mainly the RAF,’ said Traudl. ‘The Ivans sent some bombers over too, just before you arrived, but we shot them all down. I saw one of them crash! I don’t think they’ll be back.’

Professor Kaltenbach had always reassured his family that they were safe in their city. The Soviet front line stretched from Leningrad and Moscow down to the Caucasus, he reminded them. No Soviet bombers could fly that distance. The British were nearer, he conceded. But they seemed reluctant to venture as far as Berlin. The towns and cities to the west had seen some raids but, so far, the Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft defences around the capital were formidable enough to keep them away.

But that did not stop the authorities preparing for the worst. In the last year the air-raid sirens had gone off nine times, but nothing had happened. ‘Just testing them out, I imagine,’ the Professor said.

But soon after New Year, the British took the city completely by surprise.

The Kaltenbachs were all in bed and the sirens only sounded when the bombers were over the city. Peter was deep in sleep and at first the rising and falling wailing seemed part of a strange dream. Then Herr Kaltenbach burst into his bedroom to shake him awake. ‘Hurry, Peter,’ he said. ‘Get dressed. It’s too cold for just a dressing gown. This is a strange time to have a drill, I must say.’ But he had barely uttered the words when a distant whistling was followed by explosions loud enough to rattle the windows. Charlotte began to cry and her mother hushed her with a sharp slap on the leg.

‘No time,’ said Kaltenbach. ‘Just grab a blanket.’

The siren wail faded and instead they could all hear the distant drone of aircraft engines – there were scores of them by the sound of it.

The family stumbled down the staircase to the basement, along with other sleepy residents of the block. Peter was surprised, but also a little amused, to see Frau Kaltenbach without her carefully applied make-up. She looked bilious and pasty, like someone who had been constipated for a week.

The basement was locked and the block warden, Herr Schlosser, was nowhere to be seen.

‘Obviously, no one was expecting this,’ said Herr Kaltenbach. He seemed remarkably calm. Another stick of bombs whistled down, exploding somewhere to the west. Children started to cry, but not Charlotte. She was too frightened of her mother. Her father picked her up and told her what a brave girl she was.

Schlosser came five minutes later. He was dressed and had obviously been somewhere else when the bombs started to fall. He pushed through the anxious residents with a belligerent swagger. Basement door unlocked, they hurried through to sit on the stone floor and wait.

‘I shall bring a cushion next time,’ said Kaltenbach with a smile. Charlotte and Traudl nestled under his arms, the three of them wrapped in one blanket.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.